Dundee, Scotland, 15 May, 2009: Axis-Shield plc (LSE:ASD, OSE:ASD), the international in-vitro diagnostics (IVD) company, today announces that the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has published results from Jochen Cals and colleagues, based in Maastricht University Medical Centre in the Netherlands, concerning a cluster-randomised, controlled clinical trial in the management of suspected lower respiratory tract infections in 20 Dutch general practices¹. It was found, inter alia, that those patients managed by general practitioners who were allocated to using point of care C-Reactive Protein (CRP) testing with Axis-Shield’s NycoCard™ CRP received significantly less antibiotics compared to the control group, with equal rates of patient recovery and no increase in re-consultation rates. In the CRP group, 31% of patients received antibiotic treatment compared to 53% in the control group. The authors conclude that “general practitioners’ use of point-of-care testing for C-Reactive Protein and training in enhanced communication skills significantly reduced antibiotic prescribing for lower respiratory tract infection without compromising patients’ recovery and satisfaction with care. A combination of the illness and disease focused approaches may be necessary to achieve the greatest reduction in antibiotic prescribing for this common condition in primary care.”

Axis-Shield’s biggest selling products are its tests for CRP, available both on the NycoCard™ and Afinion™ platforms. The test is very popular in Scandinavia and certain other European countries like Switzerland but is hardly used at all in other countries such as the UK, the Netherlands and the USA. It has been shown that levels of antibiotic resistance tend to be higher in countries where CRP testing is not used in primary care to aid differentiation between bacterial and viral infections and to decide whether antibiotic prescribing is merited.  In the discussion section of this paper the authors believe “C-Reactive Protein may contribute to safely withholding antibiotics from most people with low C-Reactive Protein values who most probably would not benefit from antibiotic treatment”.

Ian Gilham, Axis-Shield CEO, commented: “We firmly believe testing for CRP at the point of care in patients with suspected respiratory infections will assist general practitioners in their patient management and will promote better medicine. We are endeavouring to spread this message in those markets where this does not yet constitute current medical practice.”

1.         Cals JW, Butler CC, Hopstaken RM, Hood K, Dinant GJ. Effect of point of care testing for C reactive protein and training in communication skills on antibiotic use in lower respiratory tract infections: cluster randomised trial. BMJ 2009;338:b1374, 5 May